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Turning Indonesia into investment magnet

Since his election as president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has many times pledged to promote Indonesia as a haven for domestic and foreign investors.

Bhirawa J. Arifi (The Jakarta Post)

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Jakarta

Mon, May 15, 2017 Published on May. 15, 2017 Published on 2017-05-15T10:21:04+07:00

Trucks and heavy equipment are in operation at a construction site. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has pledged to focus on infrastructure development in his five-year term, boosting share prices of infrastructure-related firms. (Tempo/-)

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ince his election as president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has many times pledged to promote Indonesia as a haven for domestic and foreign investors.

An increase in new investment is necessary in order to help Jokowi’s administration accomplish one of his main “Nawacita” (Nine Aspirations) missions: to build and strengthen national infrastructure for the sake of the equal distribution of accelerated inter-regional development.

Yet we can clearly observe that such a desire is far from being fulfilled as the flows of investment into Indonesia have not yet met the President’s expectations.

Indonesia received Rp 612.8 trillion (about US$46 billion at current exchange rate) in new investment in 2016, a 3 percent increase from Rp 545.4 trillion in 2015. These amounts seem enormous, but they are actually quite mediocre and could be regarded as insufficient if we bear in mind the price-tag of Jokowi’s ambitious mega-projects across the country.